lehe wrote: > I just solve my problem by adding the path of my newly-installed bash to the > beginning of PATH. However I now have some new questions: > > 1. The change to PATH is effective only in the current shell session. I was > wondering if it is possible to run the new bash instead of the old one > everytime it is lauched in terminal, putty and in emacs. Is there a place > where the change to PATH could be added and executed before bash starts, > like ".bashrc" for when bash is lauched?
The best place is with 'chsh' to change your account to use the new shell. But of course that doesn't work because your personal binary won't be listed in the systems list of known shells. So you will have to improvise. This is what I have done in these types of cases. Bash reads the $HOME/.bash_profile on login. Put your PATH adjustments there. Then 'exec' a new bash process, overlaying the current process. The new shell won't be a login shell and won't read .bash_profile and won't create an infinite loop. The new shell will read the $HOME/.bashrc file. The danger is creating an infinite loop at login. Or creating an error that causes your login process to exit. Or both! Beware! When making these types of changes I always keep spare terminals logged in so that I can recover from mistakes. Otherwise you will need to beg for help from the superuser to recover. Be careful! In .bash_profile: PATH=$HOME/bin:$PATH SHELL=$HOME/bin/bash exec $SHELL Remember that exec overlays the current process replacing it with the new process. Nothing in the same file after the exec will be run. It exits the current file at that point. Bob
